Distance-Dependent Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer Enhancement on Nanoporous Gold

Lianmin Cui; Ling Zhang; Heping Zeng

doi:10.3390/nano11112927

Distance-Dependent Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer Enhancement on Nanoporous Gold

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2021 Nov 1;11(11):2927. doi: 10.3390/nano11112927.

Authors

Lianmin Cui^{1

2}, Ling Zhang¹, Heping Zeng^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China.
² Public Experiment Center, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China.
³ Key Laboratory for Ultrafine Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.
⁴ Chongqing Key Laboratory of Precision Optics, Chongqing Institute of East China Normal University, Chongqing 401120, China.

Abstract

Fluorescence resonance energy transfers (FRET) between cyan fluorescent protein (CFP) and yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) on nanoporous gold (NPG) are systematically investigated by controlling the distance between NPG and fluorescent proteins with polyelectrolyte multilayers. The FRET between CFP and YFP is significantly enhanced by NPG, and the maximum enhancement is related to both ligament size of NPG and the distance between NPG and proteins. With the optimized distance, 18-fold FRET enhancement was obtained on NPG compared to that on glass, and the conversion efficiency is about 90%. The potential to tune the characteristic energy transfer distance has implications for applications in nanophotonic devices and provides a possible way to design sensors and light energy converters.

Keywords: FRET; fluorescence enhancement; nanoporous gold; plasmon; protein.

Grants and funding

61875126; 61675133/National Natural Science Foundation of China